Is there a belief about the Universe or about ourselves that causes all of the conflict in the world?As a sustainability philosopher and social engineer, I spend much of my time contemplating the root of our unsustainable culture and civilisation. I believe that war, ecocide, and extreme inequality all result from the felt experience of separation from the Universe and everything else in it. Whether or not you have felt this experience of separation depends on your answer to the question, “Who are you?” Are you a separate individual in a Universe which is separate from you as well? Or are you the sum total of all of your experiences and relationships to the Universe, making the Universe an inseparable part of who you are?If you feel separate from a purposeless, objective, and deterministic Universe, then you are likely to experience life from a perspective of fear. You probably believe that nothing else in the Universe cares whether you exist or not and it is up to you alone to ensure your own survival. Everything else in the Universe is also doing their best to ensure their own survival and what results is a world where survival belongs to the fittest. This is the default world-view of modern society that is reinforced by our government, culture, media, school, medicine, sports, religion, and every other major institution of our time.Stemming from this fear and the belief in a separate self is the desire to protect ourselves by controlling the external, perceived-to-be-hostile world, which is a perfectly logical and rational belief given the ideology of separation.We are addicted to controlWe control and dominate our fellow animals – our brothers and sisters – mostly to meet human desires. We destroy our forests – the lungs of our planet – to make room for our controlled animals to graze. We attempt to control human behaviour through a system of laws backed by punishment, even prohibiting under threat of imprisonment what people can put inside their own bodies. It is hoped that by controlling human genes, we will finally have the tools to eradicate disease, to engineer pest and drought resistant monocultures, and possibly even to design the physical and emotional features of your future children. Would you like a child with brown or blue eyes? All of these attempts to control the world we call “progress.” Left unsaid is the subject of this particular progress which is our quest to control the Universe.